


Cruel to be Kind

by shewhoguards



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Caning, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 04:57:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5954443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/pseuds/shewhoguards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gen misbehaving – fidgeting, yawning, pretending to fall asleep – was routine enough in Court that by now Irene could manage to mostly ignore it. She sent him a stern look from time to time when he was over-stepping the mark, and verbally reined him in as needed, but annoying as he was he was mostly listening, even if very few there ever realised it.</p>
<p>Ironically, he was far more distracting to her when he was trying to keep his fidgeting unnoticed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cruel to be Kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fanfic_nonnie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanfic_nonnie/gifts).



Gen misbehaving – fidgeting, yawning, and pretending to fall asleep – was routine enough in Court that by now Irene could manage to mostly ignore it. She sent him a stern look from time to time when he was over-stepping the mark, and verbally reined him in as needed, but annoying as he was he was mostly listening, even if very few there ever realised it.

Ironically, he was far more distracting to her when he was trying to keep his fidgeting unnoticed.

His hook was bothering him today. She could tell from the amount of fuss he was trying not to make about it. He rubbed discreetly at his wrist when he thought no-one was looking; jammed it under his other arm as though to prevent himself from touching it; winced now and then when he changed position in his seat.

If he’d acted petulant, sulked and whined and taken it out on the plaintiffs, she’d have known it was likely to be something she could safely ignore. As it was, Gen being quiet about something that was bothering him was unusual enough that Irene found that she was the one guilty of not paying attention.

And perhaps no-one would have noticed that – or if they had wouldn’t have dared say so – but Gen, of course, did. He sat up straighter the first time she missed a remark directed at her, shooting her an amused look, but it didn’t stop him from rubbing – or trying not to rub – at his sleeve and Irene couldn’t seem to stop glancing at him to check on the pained little line that had appeared between his eyebrows. By the third time she needed a comment repeating he was openly smirking and Irene wanted to strangle him, irritated and worried in equal measure.

She thanked the gods silently for scheduled breaks, aware that while her court might raise an amused eyebrow if she scolded the King for not paying attention they would probably be more bewildered if she scolded him for being the _only_ one paying attention. A break meant a private room, a chance to find out what he was hiding. His hook bothering him – it hadn’t bothered him, as far as she knew, for months – could mean anything. Could mean some kind of infection hiding away, eating away at him, and threatening to steal him away.

She’d never been one to jump to the worst conclusions before she’d had Gen. She’d never had anything she feared to lose quite so badly before that.

He was still grinning as he followed her out. Quite unreasonably, she found herself wanting to slap him for it. How _dare_ he be so cheerful while he was simultaneously worrying her so much? She marched ahead of him, leading the way to her private rooms, refusing to share so much as a smile with him until the door had closed and locked attendants and guards safely outside.

“Your arm,” she said curtly, sparing no time for niceties as worry made her brusque. “What’s wrong with it?”

She should have known better than to phrase it like that; Gen entertained himself far too much by purposely misunderstanding such questions. He leaned against her desk and glanced down at the place where stump met hook, raising one eyebrow at her. “I’m surprised you’ve forgotten,” he said, more teasing than bitter. “You were there, after all.”

Irene covered her eyes with her hand for a moment and counted silently to ten, the better to keep her temper. “Just for once, could you give a straight answer to a straight question?” she said, already knowing that the more irritated her tone became the more he would have counted himself as having won. “It’s bothering you. It wasn’t bothering you last week.” At least, she hoped it hadn’t been. She hoped she hadn’t been unobservant. “I thought you’d become used to the hook.”

“The hook, yes.” He wiggled it slightly, as though she might have forgotten its presence. “However, it appears wooden hands wear out, and as you keep requiring me to attend the type of occasions where apparently hooks are not suitable.”

Which meant he’d had a new one fitted – quietly, because much as he liked to tease her, he drew a line between teasing her and hurting her – and it was bothering him. For once, when Irene’s lips thinned it wasn’t his fault – or not directly. “Have you seen the physician?”

He scowled, and jammed the hook under his arm as though trying to protect it from such interference. “What’s he going to do, put stitches in it?”

“Show me.” Unthinking for a moment she reached towards it, and he flinched back, joking demeanour falling away for a second. There were lines – lines agreed without a word ever needing to be spoken between them – that they didn’t cross. He didn’t hurt her by blaming her on the days when the loss was truly unbearable; she didn’t force the issue or make him feel reduced by it.

Except apparently when she needed to force the issue, because she was scared that it might be more than he was sharing with her and all he did was make light in the face of her fears and drove her to break her unspoken rules. She withdrew her hand quickly, knowing she’d overstepped but still needing to know. “Just so I can see it’s not infected,” she said, voice gentler than the tones they usually used with each other. “Please.”

Had she ordered him he would have slipped away, glib reply at the ready. Asking was different, and though he didn’t look happy about it Gen reluctantly unscrewed the hook, exposing the stump to the air.

It looked red and irritated but, to Irene’s relief, no worse than that. Undoubtedly it would be much improved by a day or two with Gen wearing nothing on it at all but she knew better than to even suggest that. Even privately, when no-one was there but the two of them, it was rare Gen would allow that.

“See the physician,” she said instead, returning to that point as a way to justify her temporary slip. “It may be there’s a cream or something he can give you for it.”

“He’d prescribe some ointment that stung like hell and did nothing to help,” Gen grumbled, though not seriously, clearly more comfortable now they were back on familiar ground. He shot her a sideways look. “Besides it’s going to do nothing to fix the real problem.”

Irene sensed the trap, sighed mentally, and walked into it anyway. He deserved that much from her. “Which is?”

The triumphant expression on his face for a second made it worth it. “Which is that it itches _here,_ ” he explained, and gestured to a point in the air approximately three inches above the end of his wrist. “And I doubt that even your Attolian physicians can provide an ointment to spread on a hand which no longer exists.” He lounged back against her desk and gave her a sardonic smile, daring her to order him to go anyway. “Some problems can’t be fixed.”

He’d have hated pity, or even sympathy, so Irene didn’t offer any. Nor did she give in to guilt; she’d learnt early that doing so would be the death stroke for any relationship between them. She frowned instead, considering it as an abstract problem rather than something caused by her mutilating the man who came to be her husband. An itch in a hand that wasn’t there? Surely something to be treated by distraction, rather than directly. A strong distraction, one that could not be ignored to overwhelm that stimulation. In which case the obvious place to think of placing attention was the good hand and – well. _Well._ Gen had after all spent most of the morning annoying her in ways she had no way to reprimand him for – or no fair way.

He straightened a little as she smiled; he knew that sharp, thin smile too well. He could read her just as well as she could read the reactions flitting across his face – intrigue, wariness, definite curiosity. With Gen curiosity almost always took the lead, especially over common sense.

“You’ve thought of something,” he said aloud, and she could feel him watching her face, trying to dredge any information she might allow to escape from her expression alone.

“Of course,” she said, as though it were obvious she should have done, even so quickly. Her eyes skimmed over the desk behind him, quickly locating what she needed. “Hold out your hand.”

He didn’t ask why, and that wasn’t obedience or meekness, not from Gen. That was curiosity again, the knowledge that if he told her to stop it was likely that she would and then he might never find out what she had intended.

The ruler was in easy reach for her, left out from earlier paperwork. She bent it slightly between her hands for a moment, considering it, vaguely remembering school days long ago when she had been an unimportant younger daughter and certainly not considered too high-ranking to be punished for such crimes as laziness or failing to behave like a proper lady.

Gen was watching her still, understanding dawning in his eyes. “I’m unsure how you think this is actually going to solve anything,” he commented, but held his hand out as she had asked, sounding more amused than wary now. This wasn’t frightening, not right now, this was play just as much as dancing around the court and his attendants was.

She shrugged. “The hand you don’t have is bothering you, and there’s no way to treat it,” she pointed out, trying to sound logical and reasonable. It seemed reasonable to her and from his tacit response she took that as agreement to her rationale. “So distract your body with the hand you do have, and then that is at least treatable.”

“Most people have more sympathy towards a grev--” He didn’t flinch as the ruler smacked down; he rarely did flinch even when he knew she had lost her temper. His voice caught for a moment though, and then continued calmly as though nothing had happened. “Grievous injury.”

“You hate sympathy,” she pointed out. “Or at least, so I understand from the multiple occasions where pretty young ladies have been trying to coo over your hook and then I have spend the next day pretending I don’t notice your attendants attempting to subtly cover up the damage to your rooms.”

He shrugged back, but only with his right shoulder, still holding his left hand steady. “They get bored if I don’t give them work to entertain them,” he said, and his eyes followed the ruler as it came down for the second blow. It left a red line across his hand which he studied for a moment. “And here I thought I’d been quite well-behaved in company today.”

There was laughter in his voice as he said that, his eyes teasing her even as he tried to hold his expression serious. If anything he had been too well-behaved, once he’d noticed her distraction, for once carefully minding his manners and staying courteous rather than behaving like a bored teenager. It had been Irene whose lack of attention was obvious- and they both knew it. Somehow she had married a man who could make even good behaviour as annoying as possible.

“Consider it paid down for tomorrow,” she told him drily. “Or for whatever you’ve done that I have yet to find out about. I’m sure there’s something.”

“Now you sound like Helen,” he complained mildly. “I’m sure I don’t know why I end up with such untrusting queens.”

The ruler cracked again against his hand, and this time he jerked just slightly as it fell against already tender skin. “You know, Costis is going to wonder if I can’t hold a sword tomorrow for practicing with him.”

Irene laughed at that. “Costis still believes that you have bruises because you stand still enough for Ostin to be able to hit you when you practice with him,” she pointed out. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

“Are you suggesting that I lie to my guard?” He grinned at her, apparently not insulted by the idea.

“I’m not sure why he should be so special as to be the only one to hear the truth from you,” Irene said. “You certainly never hesitate when it comes to lying to anyone else.” She was watching his face closely, observing the way it tightened just slightly in the seconds before the ruler fell, tensing in anticipation.

“It feels unfair to lie to him too often,” Gen admitted. “Between his lack of imagination, and reluctance to question anything coming out of a superiors’ mouth, it’s too easy. Feels like cheating. Still, he’s getting better.” He winced at the next blow, exhaling in pain for a moment. “That one hurt,” he complained, his tone one of surprised indignation, like a child who had discovered that yes fire really _did_ burn.

“That would be the point,” Irene said calmly looking at the red skin of his hand. “And stop corrupting my guard.”

“ _My_ guard,” Gen corrected, mildly possessive, and winced again. Evidently they had reached the point where pretending it had little effect was no longer an option.

She watched him then, more carefully, well-used to his expressions and patterns of speech. What Gen _said_ made little difference – she had learned months ago that Gen would be full of dry retorts and cheerful teasing until the moment they had gone too far. He could lie, this husband of hers, with his face and voice as well as his words, and ‘I am doing fine’ was one of his most frequent and most damaging lies. It was up to her to watch to see when that was no longer true, when it was too close to stepping near something more serious, and stop.

They bickered on, but Irene was watching for the moments when he seemed to hesitate, losing his ready replies; the way he shifted and leaned away rather than towards her; the point where he started to hold his damaged arm protectively close to his body. All the signs that some part of his body and mind were forgetting that this was play and remembering another time where the pain wasn’t at all playful, and didn’t stop when he begged.

He tensed when she laid the ruler back down on the desk and reached for him, but it was only for a moment. Just for a moment and then he relaxed into her arms, head resting against her shoulder as he drew deep shuddering breaths. She caught his hand and soothed it, her thumb stroking gently over the fresh marks she had left, feeling him shiver at the touch against newly sensitive skin.

“For a moment,” he admitted, “I almost forgot...”

“I know.” She didn’t tell him that she always knew, whether it was due to something she had done, to nightmares, or to another situation which brought back the past too close and vivid for comfort. In the split-second where his brain wondered whether today he was in the trap he could never escape, she always knew. She smoothed a hand over his hair, letting him hide his face against her neck for the time he needed to, holding him while he worked to regain his equilibrium. “You never tell me to stop.”

“No,” he agreed, and was quiet a moment before he added, “Sometimes I think I’m testing whether you would, whatever I said.”

She tugged his hair lightly, making him lift his head from her shoulder, making sure he saw her face. “I will always stop,” she promised him. “Whether you ask or not, no matter what you’ve done.”

Gen grinned at that, subdued look fading. “You know I’m going to test that.”

“Just about every day since I met you, yes.” Irene’s tone was dry, but she was smiling. “Next time it might be easier to go to the physician when I tell you.”

“Physician is kinder,” Gen agreed, his voice serious in the way it only was when he was seeing how far he could push her. “Though far less beautiful.”

“Poisonous brat,” she said, the insult more affectionate than a thousand pet-names. “You should have been spanked more as a child.”

“And then what fun would you have had in life, if you couldn’t have amended the situation?” He looked again at his hand, considering the red marks critically. “You know, I was promised that the main advantage of this technique over ointment is that someone was going to fix it for me afterwards. I see no signs that anyone is going to be kind enough to fix it for me, in fact I think I might need to go find someone to go do that for me. Perhaps one of the pretty girls the physician has running around for him...”

“If you dare...” Irene exclaimed, but she was laughing when she kissed him, and he was laughing back as he reached to pull her closer, uncaring that there were other things they were both meant to be doing.

*

Unsurprisingly, they were late back to Court. The murmur that went around the room, most people having noted Attolia’s expression as she swept out earlier, was that the King had again needed chastising for some reason or another.

They never knew how right they were.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
